Providers of audio-visual programs, such as movies, and television shows generally follow a well known workflow to create, process, and distribute such audio-visual programs to viewers. The process of creating content generally entails the capture of visual images and audio (although in some instances, the audio gets added and/or modified after image capture). Traditionally, motion picture film cameras have been used to capture visual images. While film cameras often remain the device of choice, digital video cameras, such as the Thomson Grass Valley Viper film stream camera have increased in popularity. The use of digital video cameras afford the advantage of eliminating the need to digitize the images captured by the film camera(s) for subsequent digital processing, e.g., adding visual effects.
In the course of content creation, the director and/or director of photography typically want to review all or at least a portion of the captured images, usually on a daily basis. The terms “digital dailies” or “rushes” generally refer to the captured images viewed on such a daily basis. In the case of film, the captured images usually undergo a transfer to a telecine device such as the Thomson Grass Valley Spirit telecine device. The telecine device scans the film to create a digital output file(s) or a digital video signal for recording and for display on a television set or digital projector. In some instances, such digital output file(s) first undergo processing prior to display. In the course of scanning the film, a colorist can apply color correction, giving rise to a color decision list (CDL) that typically exists as metadata associated with the digital output file(s) of the telecine. Such metadata will indicate the color correction decisions made by the colorist. By its very nature, a digital video camera, such as the Thomson Grass Valley Viper digital video camera, produces digital output file(s) representative of the captured images. Thus, no need exists for any transfer to a telecine device. Like the digital output file(s) from the telecine, the digital output file(s) from the digital video camera(s) usually undergo color correction in the course of creating digital dailies (i.e., digital files representative of captured images).
In the past, the CDL generated in the course of creating digital dailies has played little if any role in later processing operations such as Digital Intermediate generation. Presently, each successive processing operation in the workflow associated with the creation, processing and production of an audio-visual program produces different CDLs that bear little if any relationship with the CDL created during any of the preceding processing operations. One reason for the lack of a relationship between the CDLs associated with successive processing operations has been the inability to provide a consistent frame of reference (base exposure and color and final intended display device emulation) for such CDL for each processing operation.
Thus a need exists for an image processing technique that enables image processing information, such as, but not limited to, the CDL associated with a given processing operation to be carried forward to a subsequent processing operation.